This paper reports a perception experiment on Papuan Malay, an Eastern Indonesian language for which phrase prosody is largely underresearched. While phrase-final f0 movements are the most prominent ones in this language, it remains to be seen to what extent they signal phrase boundaries (demarcating) or whether they contribute to the prosodic prominence of words in that position (highlighting). Crucially, it is unclear whether these functions can actually be teased apart. In an attempt to investigate this issue, a word identification experiment was carried out using manipulated and original f0 word contours in phrase-medial and phrase-final positions. Results indicate that Papuan Malay listeners recognize words faster in phrase-final position, although the shape of the f0 movement did not significantly affect response latencies. The outcomes are discussed in a typological perspective, with particular attention to Trade Malay languages.
Cite as: Kaland, C., Gordon, M. (2021) How f0 and Phrase Position Affect Papuan Malay Word Identification. Proc. Interspeech 2021, 2606-2610, doi: 10.21437/Interspeech.2021-6
@inproceedings{kaland21_interspeech,
author={Constantijn Kaland and Matthew Gordon},
title={{How f0 and Phrase Position Affect Papuan Malay Word Identification}},
year=2021,
booktitle={Proc. Interspeech 2021},
pages={2606--2610},
doi={10.21437/Interspeech.2021-6}
}